In retrospect, was the NHS such a good idea?

Dyffrin - it wont go! There's lots of scaremongering around but any government knows that the NHS is sacred to the population and will not dare to close it. What any reasonable government might do/should do is look at how it could be improved and made to suit current demands which are very different from those it was set up to meet. Change isn't always for the worst.

When my DS was born at Lancaster Infirmary back in 1983, there was a rather worrying sign outside the main entrance pointing to the Crematorium - I always felt not terribly tactful!

I was thinking about the people who have said there should be a £10 charge to see a GP, do they not realise that for some families this would mean a choice between feeding the children and seeing a doctor? A choice no one should have to make.

I think the major problem we have with the NHS at the moment is that many users have developed the mindset of feeling entitled to demand many treatments that are not strictly necessary - we have a culture were people decide they want it as opposed to need it.

ie: IVF, gastric band surgery, breast implants/breast reduction surgery, tattoo removal, etc.

Need was the main criteria when the NHS was introduced all those years ago but now we have the "I pay my National Insurance so I should be able to have it!" patients who are helping to cripple what was once a fine service.

I used to be a doctors receptionist and there was a specific hard-core of patients who appeared to have a season ticket to the surgery - if they heard a medical item on the news they booked an appointment to grill the Doc about it or - even worse - they regularly trawled the Internet, spotted something they thought they might have/may get and swanned into the waiting room armed with a sheaf of print-outs ready to tell Doc exactly what they wanted and expected to get because "I pay my National Insurance!"

Gawd!

I try to avoid the NHS as much as possible. The last time I went because my back was in spasm I was told to take a couple of paracetamol. I turned to an injuries specialist [private] and it turned out I had a leg deformity which was putting me out of kilter. I now wear a built up shoe and have only the odd relapse - mainly due to my own stupidity! My GS nearly died from meningitis because the receptionist told his father the child would have to wait 2 hours - fortunately his dad is made of sterner stuff and then it was blue lights all the way!!! Staff - once passed the reception - are generally pleasant but so overworked. The NHS is great in principle but it's not changed with the times and flinging money at it is not the answer. Cottage hospitals have gone sadly and they did a grand job. I have to say getting old scares me especially having had to cope with the NHS and my parents.

OP -in retrospect the NHS was not just a good idea, it was a shining example, a beacon as to how the health needs of people should be met to enable them to be treated with dignity and respect, to live fuller, longer and healthier lives reducing the fear of mortality and morbidity that plagued previous generations. I once saw a GP being interviewed on TV about the difference it's introduction made - he said in the first weeks he had a long stream of women with dreadful prolapsed after years of births and he was able to arrange surgery for them to transform their lives. He said their gratitude brought him to tears.
But of course the world and medicine was a very different place then and there are is no way that a 1948 model could work now - and indeed it has changed enormously.

BTW I do wish people wouldn't keep relating NICs to entitlement to health care.80% of the budget comes from general taxation , less than 2% from patient contributions and about 18% from NICs.

Thank you to those living abroad for detailed and thoughtful posts about other health care systems

I was born in 1947 with a cleft lip and palate. This required repair by surgery throughout my childhood and orthodontal treatment till I was 18 years old. I do not know how my parents would have managed had it not been for the NHS. As it is, I feel I have been very fortunate and have benefitted greatly already from NHS services. I have still to reach old age, when I may well need to rely on those services.

As others have said, I think there needs to be an in depth review of health and social care as the nation ages. Issues seem to be around management and targeting treatment as well as funding.

I have greatly enjoyed reading everyone's thoughts on this thread. A pity our Government does take more notice of thoughtful and sensible suggestions like those appearing on here.

should read '..Government does not...'

I was born in January 1947. The NHS was not in operation at the time - that came on 5th July 1948.

I was born in 1946 before the NHS. My parents told me that each time the doctor called in they had to pay him 5 shillings. It must have been a huge relief when a doctor's visit was free under the NHS. I think the average weekly wage at that time was about £2.10s. so it was huge chunk out of people's income.

Well, how times have changed. I don't think doctors make many house calls these days but long live the NHS. For all its faults, getting an appointment, seeing different doctors all the time, long waiting lists etc., we are lucky to have it. My son had bowel cancer last year (now in remission and the surgeons preformed brilliant surgery and saved his life.

Anya If you were referring to Blinko's post about cleft palate, she would not have been operated on at birth back in 1947. I think she meant that when she was ready for surgery, the family were very relieved to have the NHS.

My niece was born with this in 1971 and they still were not starting the reconstruction surgeries on newborns in the US. She had four in her life up to age 16. Now they do start the series of ops very early, under 3 months or even sooner.

No I wasn't referring to that Lewlew it was simply that some of us were in existence before the NHS.

I was born by emergency Caesarian, my mother having had problems getting from a rural area of Scotland to a hospital due to horrific snowstorms. Just wondering if she'd have had to pay for that???

Does anyone know how many sections there are in the NHS?

We have the DOH, NHSEngland, NHSProfessionals, CCGs, CQC, NHS Improvement, NIHCE, Public Health England, Health Education England, and a few others I can't remember. Then there's Scotland, Wales and NI, too.

I wonder how much duplication there is, because the DOH can't organise its computer systems properly - or at all.

Originally a brilliant concept. Family relatives nursing in the old East End of London testify to that. As a front line nurse for 40 years myself the reorganisations and changes of direction became too daft to laugh at, did nothing for morale and little to improve sustained patient care. Perhaps a radical move of taking NHS planning out of political control is required. That way plans could be made that actually got properly implemented, assessed and reviewed. And (shields up!) take self employed status from doctor contracts.

Having said that, there are of course examples of excellent practice and I have experienced quite a few personally. Howev, I do not really know the answer. Sighs .....

Anya Wow... that must have been scary for her. Glad it went OK as you are here! I wonder if people paid instalments when it was a big expense like that?

Were the hospitals not run by charities in those days?

My mum was born in S Wales in the 1920's. She said they had a local scheme, a bit like an insurance scheme, I guess, where you paid 3d a week and you got healthcare in return.

Not everyone could afford even that and she remembers their doctor would accept goods in payment for services.

Margs c'mon. You can't get purely cosmetic breast surgery on the NHS. If women have such large breasts that they are physically uncomfortable it might be deemed a medical need.

Didn't most women have babies at home then anyway?
My mother nursed in a nursing home in the fifties, but both my sisters were born at home, one in a flat above a fruit shop.
Midwives came to the houses. The nursing home was in a posh area, and those who went there paid, even in the fifties.

Yup. I was born in Redlands Nursing Home in Glasgow in 1956 and my parents had to pay.

My grandparents were living in very poor one room accommodation in Manchester with my mum, a toddler, when her brother was born in 1923 or 1924. He was a large baby and was born in what the family history tells us was a Salvation Army hospital. Grandpa was out of work, times were grim. Mum and her siblings talk about the doctor visiting when they were little and charging half a crown. Thank heavens for the NHS and let's do all we can to support it.

I was born before the NHS and was not expected to survive nor was my mother but we both did. When i left England in 1969 to go to Germany the NHS was really good. My daughter had been well cared for and the birth and after care was very modern with babies always with their mothers.
Later In Germany DD2 was handed to me rolled up tight and only fed every 4 hours.
I watched from then how the NHS Went downhill and German medical care became more human and efficient until the day when the abulance carrying my sick brother, turned right at the sign THE ELDERLY where he later died of something any university hospital in Germany could have cured him of.
My sister showed me the death certificate which I showed to my GP here and he just shook his head and could see no reason why someone should die from what he had. He died of neglect.
What now?
Paying to see the doctor was a catastrophy in Germany as they were inundated with 10 Euro notes which had to be kept seperately from other money and then once you have paid and you want to visit another doctor or go to hospial more surveillance will be needed and more notes floating around and mounting up.
The NHS needs a huge amount of money and more independence for doctors. More people with authority and an end to endless team meetings and discussions which are not productive for the hours they take up. Nothing new here but care of the frail and the elderly has to be seperated and funded out of National Insurance. Being old and needing care is not an illness.
STop looking at the US and being thankful the NHS is better but look around at other European systems and learn from them

I agree. Its well worth looking at the various European systems.
On a different note, before I retired from NHS I used to have to go to so many meetings that I costed the hourly rate of each person attending and worked out what each meeting actually cost. I then analysed the outcomes and therefore point of the meetings. Many were quite unnecessary but went on because that was what always happened. When I put this to our clinical director and clinical governance people they didn't want to know. Ah well...